Somerset House celebrates its 25th birthday in 2025 and its role as London’s home of cultural innovators by delivering a programme that offers alternative perspectives and challenges conventions during its milestone year. Virtual Beauty, an exhibition exploring the impact of digital technologies on definitions of beauty today offers an original approach to a key issue of our time. Curated by Gonzalo Herrero Delicado, Mathilde Friis and Bunny Kinney, Virtual Beauty raises questions around gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and identity in the post-internet era, featuring over 20 compelling works from international artists working across sculpture, photography, installation and video.
Image above: Ines Alpha. I’d rather be a cyborg (2024). Photograph by Li Roda-Gil. Courtesy of the artist.
From social media filters and artificial intelligence to biometrics and dating apps, the works by emerging and established artists presented in Virtual Beauty examine how we are more self-aware and calculated in the way we present ourselves publicly than ever before. A new generation has come of age that has only lived in a world where the idea of digital self-curation is a part of their everyday lives. Crossing between the virtual and physical, the exhibition highlights how questions of beauty are inherent to the proliferation of portable devices and screens on which people look at themselves every day and share these altered, enhanced, or filtered identities with the world. These curated identities exist beyond the boundaries of traditional media and explore how individuals can reclaim and empower themselves. Virtual Beauty reconsiders who holds the power to define conventions of beauty today and the very definition of human identity.
Curated by Gonzalo Herrero Delicado, Mathilde Friis, and Bunny Kinney, and featuring over 20 international artists working across sculpture, photography, installation, and video, Virtual Beauty delves into the influence of artificial intelligence, social media, and digital avatars on self-image, and questions who holds the power to define beauty.
Participating artists:
ORLAN, Amalia Ulman, Hyungkoo Lee, Minne Atairu, Qualeasha Wood, Sin Wai Kin, M.C. Abbott, María Buey González and Carl Olsson, Lil Miquela, Filip Ćustić, Ben Cullen Williams and Isamaya Ffrench, Aleksander Nærbø, Ines Alpha, Bunny Kinney, Angelfire, Harriet Davey, Anan Fries, Andrew Thomas Huang and James Merry , Frederik Heyman, Arvida Byström, and Michael Wallinger
Programme:
Panel Discussion: Curating the Self – Technology, Beauty, and Identity in the Digital Age with Mathilde Friis, Gonzalo Herrero Delicado, Daniella Loftus and Ellen Atlanta
Thursday 24 July 19.00 (£10/ £7.50 concession)
Screening Room, South Wing
Exclusive tour of the exhibition with co-curator Bunny Kinney
Thursday 31 July 19.00 (£8/£6 concession)
Terrace Rooms & Courtyard Room 2, South Wing
Exclusive tour of the exhibition with co-curator Mathilde Friis
Thursday 14 August 19.00 (£8/£6 concession)
Terrace Rooms & Courtyard Room 2, South Wing
Relaxed Session – for anyone who would like to explore the exhibition in a calm and comfortable environment.
Friday 22 August 10.00-11.30 (Booking Required – Free)
Terrace Rooms, South Wing
Exclusive tour of the exhibition with co-curator Gonzalo Herrero Delicado Saturday 6 September 17.00 (£8/£6 concession)
Terrace Rooms & Courtyard Room 2, South Wing
WHEN?
Wednesday, July 23 to Sunday, September 28, 2025
Opening hours:
Sun–Wed: 10 am to 6 pm
Thu and Fri: 12 pm to 8 pm
Sat: 10 am to 8 pm
WHERE?
Somerset House
Strand
WC2R 1LA, London
